Thursday, November 17, 2016

FIAS Congress

It is that time of the year again when we have the FIAS
International Sambo Federations International Congress followed by the World
Sambo Championships. This year it was held in Sofia Bulgaria November 10th and the Worlds were November 11th - 14th

FIAS was formed in 1985 and I have been involved with them
since then, my first outing was the World Games in 1985 held at Crystal Palace
London. Since then I have attended most World Championships and Congresses and
what changes I have seen since those early days

At the very start Congress was held in small restaurants
with about 10 nations everyone speaking different languages with the hope some
could translate. Now we have over 88 nations affiliated and many more participating for the first time, Congress is held in
large stately Halls each person is given an earphone with your own personal
translator and the whole thing is organised in a very professional manner. FIAS
is now a large organisation with many professional staff with offices in
Switzerland and Russia. It is a very professional organisation covering all
aspects required to make it an Olympic Sport in fact I would go as far as to
say a lot of International Sports Federations could take a leaf out of the FIAS
Book.

Previous Presidents like Fernando Compte (FIAS Founder) Josh Henson USA David Rudman Russia
were part of the early build up BUT is was the arrival of the present President
Vasili Shestakov that we saw real advances made into the Sport of Sambo his
connections with Government, Businessman and many others took us to another
level from a small organisation to one with over 100 countries affiliated. His
Team of Mr A Klymanko (First Vice President) Mr S Gopi (Legal) R Ferraris (Gen Sec) Mr S Eliseev (European
President) and the rest of the Committee members are sometimes forgotten but
they as much a part of the Team that makes FIAS such a great organisation.

The congress went of very smoothly as with most AGM they can
be a bit mundane what I found interesting was the Calendar of Events which can
be seen on the FIAS Web site especially the announcement of next years World
Championships which will be in Sochi in Russia and the Europeans in Minsk
Belarus. The French delegation brought up a couple of interesting points

1)a maximum weight for Men and Women as this seems
to be the direction of other Grappling styles. Not sure if I agree with that
early in the Congress we heard from Suresh Gopi that FIAS had enshrined the
Olympic ideal of no discrimination yet here was an idea that we should
discriminate against Heavy people? Maybe put an extra category i.e. for Over
125k?

2)It was also brought up that in Amateur boxing
the Head Guard has been abandoned because it is alleged it causes more problems
then it serves. Yet if Combat Sambo accepts this, the rules may have to change
with regard to Head Butts especially. Once again not every thing is straight
forward

Many of the items will be brought up at the British Sombo Federation
AGM in January